Can Italians understand Spanish speakers?

Surprisingly, yes! It is entirely possible for an Italian speaker to understand Spanish, but each person needs to adapt, speak slowly, and sometimes change their vocabulary. Spanish and Italian are two languages that are very close in terms of vocabulary and grammar.

Does Italian sound Spanish?

For an Italian Italian does not sound like Spanish. For a British and people in many other nations it does. It’s hard to perceive for an English speaker that Italian has open and closed e/o and Spanish hasn’t, specially when Spanish e and o are a not either open or closed. Or that Spanish has not double consonants.

How much Spanish can Italians understand?

Since both languages are the closest to Latin, that means they are also the closest to each other. Fun Fact: Italian and Spanish have a lexical similarity of over 80\%! This means that 4 out of 5 words are similar in both languages.

Why does Spanish and Italian sound so similar?

Yes. Spanish is known as an Ibero-Romance language and Italian is part of the Italo-Dalmatian family of languages. They’re both known as Romance languages and as all Romance languages they have their origin in Vulgar Latin hence why they have very similar sounds.

Why does Spanish sound similar to Italian?

Spanish tends to sound more like Italian than European Portuguese. The biggest difference you can attribute this to is the vowel reduction in Portuguese or the weakening of vowel sounds. Unlike the melodic cadence of Italian and Spanish, European Portuguese is often compared to Slavic or Russian languages.

Is Italian harder than Spanish?

It’s a little more difficult than Spanish because the pronunciation of this language is more challenging, but it is very similar to Spanish in vocabulary and grammar. As far as French and Italian are concerned, I am not sure which one I would choose to put on the third place in relation to difficulty.

Why does Spanish and Italian sound similar?

What is the difference between Italian and Argentinian accents?

And it has lost some ticks in the last decades. As an Italian, to me Argentinian accent sounds as a mix of Italian accents. That’s why an Italian that speaks Spanish doesn’t sound Argentinian. An Italian would have his own accent (there is one at least for every Italian province), while Argentinian is a mix.

Is Italian easier to understand if you don’t speak the language?

The result in my opinion is usually that speech in Italian is much more easily intelligible even to someone who doesn’t speak the language (that is, you can tell what sounds are being pronounced and how they form syllables together, even if you can’t tell what they mean as words and sentences).

Are Italians in Spain often mistaken for Argentinians?

On the other hand, Italians who live in Spain and speak good Spanish (e.g., Erasmus students) are often mistaken for Argentinians by older Spanish people. The younger generations do not make the confusion, as they are more used to travel and foreign accents.

How many different dialects are there in Italian?

As an Italian I am here to inform you that Italy has also +20 dialects, which are as different as foreign languages (like other foreign romance languages). Dialect in my region, for example, drops the final vowels, which are substituted by a schwah sound, and st, sc and sp are pronounced sht, shk and shp.